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I learnt a couple of new English slang words today:
1. “Jammy” – means lucky, “I was really jammy to win the lottery”… also a gun, or penis
2. “Mincing” – means not doing much, lounging around, maybe like bludging – “I was just mincing at work today”… also apparently can be a reference to being gay?
Thanks to Liv for teaching me these ones, anyone got any more?
Today I’m going to tell you about another of London’s marvellous museums; The Natural History Museum. No, I’m not being sarcastic, I truly loved this place. Another London experience where you can truly appreciate the history, intellect, beauty, scale and power of the city.
Entry is free, but if you’re going to visit on a weekend as we did I’m going to tell you right now that you should book tickets to see one of the exhibitions – many of them are free, so you’re not actually paying any money, but you do get to skip the ½ hour queue to get in we encountered when we turned up. We had booked in to visit the new Darwin Cocoon (free) and the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition.
The entrance to the museum is through a large foyer with high vaulted ceilings, ornately decorated walls and marble floors – just like a Cathedral – oh, except it had a big f*ck-off dinosaur skeleton in the middle of the room… very impressive.
As we wandered the museum, first to our booked exhibitions and then through the rest of the displays, you not only get a sense of the natural sciences, but also of the evolution of the natural sciences. The Darwin Cocoon has just opened and is a state of the art centre for science, research and the preservation of most of the museums 700 million specimens; including specimens collected by Charles Darwin on his Beagle voyage and Joseph Banks on the Endeavour voyage. Yes, that’s right – you are at the centre of natural history.
The Cocoon, if you’re interested, is highly interactive, with touch screens, videos, sample specimens, windows to view the scientists at works, all that jazz. The coolest part though is the Nature Plus card you’re given which you can scan at any point you are really interested in. When you get home, you enter the card number to bring up all the extra info. Noice.
Other parts of the museum were not so modern. The mammals section was over filled with life size replicas of all the big ones – including a blue whale suspended from the ceiling. Displays were connected by narrow corridors that smelled funny, a bit like a hospital. I had the distinct impression of sterile suburban life in the 1950s (?)
The mish-mash of architectural styles really echoes the history of the Museum and the role it played in the evolution of the Natural Sciences. The more time I spent there, the more I fell in love with it. Each section was representative of a period of natural history and you couldn’t help but appreciate as you walk through that you were actually watching our natural history and science evolve right here, right now. How many museums can do that?!?
Bill Bryson is quoted having said that “the Natural History Museum… transformed our expectations of what museums are for”. Hell yes! So go there, with an open-mind, soak it up and learn something new.
WARNING: This is an anger venting post and goes on a bit.
Of all the airports I have ever been through around the world, the London ones are all at the top of the worst list. I don’t particularly care which one we’re talking about – Heathrow, Stansted, Gatwick, Luton – take your pick, they all suck. GRRRRrrrrr…. is the most articulate way of expressing how I feel about London airports.
My most recent experience occurred last Thursday when my boyfriend and I were leaving for Christmas with his family skiing in the Swiss Alps; noice. We had a 7am departure so we skipped the hassle and booked a car to drive us out – this was the first and last thing to go well.
We queued for half an hour in the car just to get into the airport. On arrival, we queued for nearly an hour just to drop off our bags (we checked in online). We queued for 20 minutes to get through security. We thought we were home free and on time when we discovered the snow in London had immobilised the mini-train to take us to our gate. So we queued, no joke, for half an hour in each of 4 different spots as thousands of people were ferried to their planes on a tiny number of buses. Half an hour outside the broken train. Half an hour at the top of the escalator down to the buses. Half an hour at the start of the hallway before going out to the buses. Half an hour to get onto the plane after the bus.
And the worst bit? NO ONE EXPLAINED ANYTHING. We were all missing our flights because we were just standing there and no employee could say a word. Worst customer service ever (except maybe BT). Then of course we waited hours on the plane waiting to take off. So, so so tense.
It’s always something at these airports, huh? As if UK budget airlines haven’t made flying such a horrible experience anyway, the pollution is now contaminating the base camp – a positive London airport experience is now the exception. To make matters worse, everyone who goes through a London airport presumably gets off at some other airport which, without a doubt, is going to be a better experience. Just to emphasize the point.
But I have to admit, I have actually had a positive experience. That one time. And it may come to no surprise to those in the know, that it was at London City Airport; my diamond in the rough. Located in Zone 3 with direct tube access, no queues, no red tape – but still all the proper precautions I am now contemplating just going to places I can get to from this airport. Brussels and Amsterdam here I come… over and over and over again.
PS Priority Pass conducts one of the biggest polls of the World’s Best & Worst Airports and Heathrow was in fact crowned #1 WORST, but the others were not listed… I hazard a guess that this is because they are not the big internationals the poll focussed on.
These are NOT my friends! Image courtesy of The Brisbane Times
As I’m writing this post, one of my closest buddies is out back home with all my other closest buddies on her hen’s night. And I’m not there. Next week she will have her wedding and I won’t be there. This post is not about London, this post is about how to survive living away from your friends and family.
This is probably the first time I’ve really wanted to be back home since I arrived in London. It’s a bit of a tough feeling – the push-and-pull of loving where you are and what you’re doing verse desperately wanting to be around the love and comfort of your friends and family back home – and one I’m sure that everyone who has ever lived somewhere else has felt at some point. In truth, having kept this feeling at bay for three months is probably pretty good.
This is not the first time I’ve lived away from home. I spent two months on exchange in France when I was 16 and was so terribly homesick I ran the risk of not enjoying the experience at all. I spent a couple years in Canada in my early twenties and barely thought about home at all – I was having too much fun with my future-husband. But I did have nightmares about something happening to my mum every couple of months which was my signal to call home.
So I have enough experience of this feeling to know that it will pass. What I was a bit stupid about was not planning something else to do. I should have known that such an important event would trigger an episode, and I know the best defence is to plan something fun to do in your new home. But I didn’t – I planned a quiet weekend! D’OH!
I was smarter about the holiday season – see you for skiing in Switzerland for Christmas and party time in Barcelona for New Year! WOOP!
PS. I know I know, life is TOUGH. This post is not meant to sound like I am not appreciating the opportunity I have here. It is simply stating the fact that every now and again, no matter how much fun your having, this feeling will likely creep over you and at that point, not much else matters.
In some ways London is so modern and advanced compared to my home town – we have nothing as convenient as an Oyster Card, Online shopping is years ahead and London embraces multiculturalism in a way I wish the rest of the world would. On the other hand, there are some areas – I guess because it is harder to change a society that’s been around so long – where London is still living in the past. I’m surprised how much of London is still paper based (banks especially) and I find companies still like sending letters, rather than emails.
But a lot of this slow-to-change stuff is great actually, and one total charmer is the regular news updates from The Evening Standard. Basically The Evening Standard has little stalls set up at the entrance to every tube station where they hand out (used to sell*) their paper every evening. Throughout the day however they are constantly updating their customers on the latest headlines using their blue and white signboards. The one I saw today was printed, but usually they are just written out by the stall guy in permanent marker.
I keep coming back to this concept of London as a big bad city, but things like this – a major circulation paper using a bunch of blokes writing on big pieces of paper as a major selling tool – make me think of London as almost romantic. And the guys are so…. British. The ones I see are big burly white guys wearing cabbie hats and sporting thick accents – from somewhere I’m yet to discover in the UK. It’s beautiful, personal, brash, gritty (what a gay word). It’s something you would never see in Sydney because we didn’t exist in the time where paperboys cried out the headlines, we never had that growth to go through. Plus it just doesn’t seem very economically viable in this day and age – imagine suggesting in today’s corporate boardroom that your advertising budget should be spent in this way. Well, I think Sydney missed out. Absolutely LOVE IT.
Of course today’s headlines are all about the forecast snow dump expected from tomorrow. Stay tuned!
* For anyone who’s interested and doesn’t already know, up until October 2009 The Evening Standard cost 50p and The London Paper and The London Lite were distributed for free (there are the papers famous for being so hot off the press you get black fingers from reading them). These free London dailies ceased publication in around November 2009 (Friday 13th November for the London Lite) and The Evening Standard took up the gap in the market.
Yesterday it got very cold – a new level of cold for my time in London. And what do you know? Today it SNOWED!!! I can’t honestly say I was dreaming of a white Christmas – it’s London after all – but it was a bit of a monumental day.
And no, before you ask it’s not the first time I’ve seen snow (and yes, I was asked) – I lived in Canada for a couple of years and I love to ski. But this is the first time in a long time I’ve just been going about my normal day and been surprised by a snowfall. Everyone else at work seemed pretty excited too, but I was the only one who walked over to the window to watch it fall.
Because a snowfall is beautiful; a world gone quiet, a world slowed down. Softly, softly. Delicate. Pretty special in such a racy city if you ask me.
It didn’t stay, not around Oxford Circus anyway. By the time I left work I was walking in the rain. However; according to the BBC there’s a fair bit on the way. Fingers crossed for snow day! (Do you get snow days if you are a grown-up worker?)
DDB's DoH Swine Flu Campaign
Hmmm… how to put this nicely?… London has the ability to turn even the most roll-around-in-the-mud-loving swine into a hand-sanitiser-gel-carrying nancy-boy germophobe.
A couple of days out and about in London will leave your fingernails and nose-boogers black. A 20-minute journey on the Northern line through Central London has the same effect as smoking a cigarette (as an infamous study from University college of London quotes). Swabs taken from tube and bus seats in London found that they contained on average three million bacteria of up to 70 different types, including tuberculosis.
Suffice to say it feels a bit dirty.
But OK, so London doesn’t actually rate as one of the world’s worst polluted cities, but I think the age of the city, the number of people and most importantly, the tube contribute to it feeling that way. The Swine Flu advertising from the Department of Health is not making anyone feel any better about it either.
While I haven’t yet succumbed to carrying around hand sanitiser, I do wash my hands thoroughly every morning as soon as I get to work and every evening as soon as I get home. My boyfriend, however, uses his hand sanitiser like a soldier surrounded in battle.
Did you know that all the poles and railings inside your tube train match the colour of the line you’re on? Here’s a shot of a tube train on my line – the Central line – which is none other than red! Woop!
Thanks to Lou W for this tidbit, which apparently a lot of long time Londoners have never noticed. Have you?
I think London has a disproportionate number of good looking people. I cannot claim to qualify this in any way, but go with me. Especially the girls, and especially at my work – side effect of working in fashion I’m afraid. So with this in my head, you can imagine my surprise when we’re all getting ready for our Christmas Party and they all parade out in so much make up I thought it must have missed a memo about the Drag Queen theme.
Black eyeliner was clearly the beauty item of choice; it was so liberally applied that even Amy Winehouse would have looked underdone. Mascara, eye shadow, sparkles, glitter, pencils… and this is still on eyes mind you! Add to this skin, cheeks and lips and it’s quite a package. I don’t think they’d ever heard of the don’t-wear-dark-eye-shadow-with-dark-lips-rule; which was a shame as it’s the only I know.
On the way to the party I held hope that my work buddies were some rare breed of Rupaul London Aliens, but I had a sinking feeling in my stomach – I knew it wasn’t true. I remembered all my stalkbook sessions checking out photos of my London friends at the time and thinking to myself “Geez, they are wearing a LOT of make up” – too much in my opinion; but what can you do? It seemed the norm – I hastily applied my red lippy before slipping into the party.
And what do you think? The music was pumping, the drinks were flowing and the lighting was dark and moody… and my Rupaul Aliens looked fabulous. While the make up looked absolutely scary under the fluorescent lights at work; it worked a charm in the nightclub lighting of our surroundings.
Once again, I lose in my underestimation of Londoners, gotta be quick friends.
louashton
